Free English Language Arts and Reading Activities for Middle School

School's back in session, which means it's time for a fresh batch of writing prompts for the new year. Have your high school or middle school students try these Back-to-School prompts this fall.

This lesson explores how to write a reflective narrative essay, a type of writing where writers reflect on an experience and show how their lives changed.

Want to help your students develop their organizational, analytical, and research skills? Teach them how to write an expository paragraph.

Teaching kids how to write a persuasive paragraph consisting of their opinion and supporting sentences puts them on the right track to being an effective communicator.

No matter what your middle school or high school class is reading, these writing prompts about love will get them ready for Valentine's Day.

Introduce students to Black innovators with these Black History Month writing prompts and guide them into a particular type of text, such as personal narrative, informative, or persuasive.

In November, National Novel Writing Month begins for thousands of writers around the world. At the same time, many teachers introduced their classrooms to the NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program, and found their students developing a new-found passion for creative writing.

Get your ELA class into the spirit with these fun Halloween activities for middle school and high school students, and learn from a few masters of horror how to really make those spines tingle and those bones shake.

Use these four fun writing prompts for middle school students, along with accompanying rubrics and tips, to help them build their writing skills throughout the school year.

Writing for television is certainly one of the more collaborative forms of writing. But collaboration is only the first step of the process, since the goal of The Writers Room is for writers to come away with an episodic assignment to complete.

Have your students explore the exciting world of TV writing with a free lesson plan and insights from producer, writer, and Carmen Sandiego showrunner Duane Capizzi.

Though the characters in these stories face challenges and obstacles, they never stop trying to do the right thing.

These stories will probably stick with you the rest of your life—the characters and what they experience are just that unforgettable! 

Dystopian novels—often set in the future—depict undesirable or frightening societies where the citizens suffer from restrictions and/or injustices.

Download a sample chapter from Finish the Fight!, accompanied by activities to engage students and honor 100 years of voting rights for women.

Though we may sometimes disagree with our friends or family members, they are often the ones we rely on to see us through difficult times.

Graphic novels are hugely popular with readers of all ages. They capture our attention and keep us turning pages compulsively.

This week’s suggested titles all fall into the nonfiction category, but they are anything but dull! If you like learning about real people and the real world, these are for you.

Escaping our own reality by diving into a fantastical world can be an exciting adventure and a therapeutic release.

When books are so engaging, filmmakers inevitably want to try adapting them for the big screen. Notice the changes they have made or have had to make as you read and watch.

Download a free Social Studies lesson plan and student activity about Native American Oral History on the Oregon Trail.

Explore space, travel in time, and make friends with a robot in this week’s great summer reads with Carol Jago.

Have middle schoolers create a Story Spine, find inspiration in everyday objects, and write an advice column.

Help students in Grades 3–12 tap into what they're feeling with an informal writing activity.

Students will learn from reading diary entries written on the Oregon Trail how such writings preserve history and bring the past to life.

Help your middle schoolers sharpen their writing and critical thinking skills with activities including a poetry scavenger hunt and an opportunity for them to invent a board game.

For this week's activities, students can create how-to videos, analyze media messages, and respond to summer writing prompts.

Teach students about synonyms and antonyms and have them create a How-To Tech Guide with these activities for middle schoolers.

Have your students hone their active-listening skills and identify literary terms with these at-home activities for middle schoolers.

Teach students about metaphors and have them write fiction stories with these free downloadable activities for middle schoolers.

Teach students in Grades 3-12 how to conduct interviews and write compelling personality features with these insights from Esther Wojcicki.

Esther Wojcicki shares her lesson on conducting an interview and writing a personality feature—​an intriguing, creative article about the interviewee.

Watch this video on how to write a poem featuring Glenis Redmond to provide your students with insights and tips for writing poetry.

Have your middle schoolers write their own haikus, identify themes in works of literature, and create a character's social media profile.

Have middle schoolers identify figurative language, start a dialectical journal, and respond to daily dinner prompts.

Have middle schoolers improve their writing, critical thinking, and reading skills with these activities, which include creating a word cloud and summarizing informational texts.

Sharpen your writing, language, critical thinking, and reading skills with these instructional resources for Grades 6-8, including a poetry scavenger hunt.

Integrate social-emotional learning into your English language arts curriculum with this literacy activity, where students read and study a text and practice important SEL competencies.